


A Con to Save an Honest Man

by ladysilvrene



Category: Leverage, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anti Steve Rogers, Anti Team Captain America, Anti wanda maximoff, Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Civil War Team Iron Man, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Multi, Pro Tony Stark, bucky goes by yasha
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:21:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27022693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladysilvrene/pseuds/ladysilvrene
Summary: Eliot had known the Winter Soldier before he'd left the military to find his own path, so when HYDRA fell, he'd done his best to ensure that Yasha got the second chance he deserved. When the signing of the Sokovia Accords in Vienna is bombed and the Winter Soldier is blamed, he knows he and his team have to do everything in their power to prevent further injustice befalling the man who was a prisoner of war for over seventy years.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer, James "Bucky" Barnes & Eliot Spencer (Leverage)
Comments: 39
Kudos: 122





	1. Something Doesn't Add Up - Eliot

**Author's Note:**

> I'll probably add more tags as I continue writing this fic; it is incomplete but this plotbunny has been gnawing at me. Basically, I started rewatching Leverage and I realized that I really wanted for Eliot Spencer and Bucky Barnes to be friends!

It was date night, and Eliot was watching a movie with Parker and Hardison when it happened. It was a cozy evening, curled up on the couch together; Parker was leaning against Hardison, her feet in Eliot’s lap while he absently massaged her calves. At first, Hardison’s phone vibrating was just background noise - nothing to be concerned about, he always had alerts coming in - but then Hardison straightened in his seat and Parker startled enough to perch on the back of the couch.

“Hold up now - so you know the Sokovia Accords? They were signing that today, and so much of the world was on-board, so I was tracking its development. Now one of the main people behind it in the States is General Thunderbolt Ross and from what I’ve been seeing he’s behind some of the less humane clauses on this- historically, not a good sign if you want to set up registration for disenfranchised groups- but we all remember that one cheerleading job we did that took us to DC where we had to learn about all of the backroom dealing that takes place in government, so the fact that he’s involved in its development and yet so much of the proposed legislation is reasonable tells me that there’s at least one person with political power holding Ross in check.”

Eliot smiled as Hardison veered off-track; he’d gotten used to it by now, infodumping and lightning-quick leaps of logic, things he had found a bit off-putting when they first met but had come to find completely endearing the longer they were together. “Yeah, so? What about it? Superhero shit is a bit outside of our usual purview. They’ve got the Avengers and Stark Industries for that, don’t they?”

“I’m getting to that- so it looks like the place they were signing the Accords was bombed, and when I looked up the reports on who was supposed to have done it, look who showed up-” here Hardison cast the news story from his phone to the television, and Eliot could see what he was getting at.

“What the hell would Yasha be doing in Austria? He said he was in Romania, lying low and working with a division of Toby’s culinary institute and shit!” Eliot burst up from the couch, dragging his hands through his hair in agitation as he paced around the apartment the three of them shared.

Hardison began pulling up more of the footage, trying to track the bomber in the time leading up to and following the bombing, but aside from the short clip that every single news station seemed to have acquired, there wasn’t any footage where facial recognition identified Yasha. There was, however, footage of another person wearing the same clothes, with a similar height and build, in the footage leading up to that clip. 

“You know Eliot, you might be onto something here.” Hardison redirected his gaze from the screen to where Eliot was pacing. “Everybody’s latched onto the idea that this bombing was perpetrated by your friend here but it doesn’t look like anybody’s really taken the time to corroborate that; we’ve got this guy here who’s wearing the exact same clothes and shows up in the footage right before and right after the clip the news stations all have, but in these other clips it seems pretty clear that it ain’t who they say it is. Now part of that might be that we’ve actually dealt with the man, and we’ve got better facial recognition software on hand, but I don’t think that’s everything- there’s something fishy going on here.”

“But what if it is him, though?” Parker was quiet, a little uncertain. “I know you trust him, Eliot, but they’re calling him the Winter Soldier, and I’ve heard stories about his capabilities as an assassin. We’re usually pretty good about it, but it wouldn’t be the first time someone had taken advantage of our desire to help people and conned us back!”

“...how much did I tell you about how I met Yasha in the first place?” Eliot had stilled, holding himself tense. His hand twitched at his side the way it sometimes did when he wanted to punch someone, or he wanted to reach for a knife- or he was remembering his past, before they’d become a team and a family.

“Not a lot. And frankly what he remembered didn’t line up too well with what you  _ did _ say about him”, Parker replied.

Eliot scrubbed his hand down his face, before turning to Hardison. “Hardison, remember when all those HYDRA files were leaked at once, and I had you grab what you could?”

“Man, we were busy for months after that! Of course I remember! And I know I’ve done a lot of things to try and buy us time when a job has gone sideways but whoever came up with that plan was either dumb or desperate. Even Chaos was unimpressed with the thought of just dumping terabytes of classified data on the internet for anyone to find, even if a lot of it was associated with a secret organization we thought we’d eradicated in the forties- just enough of that data was connected to other ops being run by other agencies that they were finding dead bodies for weeks!”

“And do you remember me asking for you to try and find any connections between my time in the service and the files that were released?”

“And I found that one file about an instructor that HYDRA sent? It was mostly redacted but what I did find in those files was off-putting as hell. Is this supposed to be reassuring somehow? Because honestly so far this train of thought is making me even more uncomfortable and concerned.” Hardison and Parker both knew better by now than to approach Eliot when he was this tense, if he did not approach them first for physical comfort, but Hardison couldn’t help his arm lifting to reach in the direction of his distressed partner.

“That’s the thing though, I don’t think they would have really noticed everything I did, certainly not to the point that it would have been recorded. But you found out that my unit had an instructor from HYDRA. Well - that was Yasha.” 


	2. Pack Your Bags - Eliot

“There was something very strange about Yasha. They introduced him as Soldat- no name, just a designation- told us we had to learn from him, and for the first couple of days he trained us, he was like a machine - no emotion, just cold precision. But they had him training us for a couple of weeks before that particular mission, and as time went on, that changed. At first it was just confusion, not really recognizing modern technology like laptops and MP3 players, but towards the end of his time training with us I was able to actually connect with him, with the person he was.”

As Eliot spoke, he leaned against a wall while Parker kept her seat along the back of the couch and Hardison dropped down on a seat next to her, holding onto his laptop.

“And this wasn’t just...warming up to us. Thing is, at the beginning he was the best instructor I’d ever encountered, but by the end of the training period he was  _ even better _ . So there had to have been some kind of reason he wasn’t as good at the beginning… And you remember how when we met him back after HYDRA fell, and he was disoriented and confused all the time, but as time went on that got better and better? I think… I think HYDRA was doing something to him. Something bad.” Eliot gestured now at the television, to where Hardison had frozen one of the news broadcasts, showing the clip with Yasha’s face and aliases. “And if they’re right, and the man I know as Yasha is also the man known as Bucky Barnes, there would have had to have been something, at least to keep him alive this long; even Cap was frozen for several decades before he rejoined modern society.”

The apartment was quiet for a moment, and Eliot stayed in the corner, tense. “When the training was coming to an end, I was out for a walk one evening, and I saw… I didn’t quite understand it at the time, and I still have questions now, but Yasha didn’t want to go with them. I’d had a couple conversations with him by then, not many, but enough that he told me then that his name was Yasha, and he liked baseball and plums, so when I saw him fighting off those operatives I wanted to help- but he must have heard me move. I still remember the moment when his eyes were locked on mine; they’d been icy and pale and emotionless when he’d started training us, but when he looked at me they were a bright blue, and they were scared, and they were determined. I remember him shaking his head at me, once, and then letting them hit him with a taser and drag him off.”

Parker was almost convinced, but she didn’t like backing down based on evidence this subjective. “But that could mean a lot of things! He still worked for HYDRA, didn’t he?”

“Honestly Parker, I don’t think he did. I think HYDRA used him- but I don’t think he worked for them. And if you tried to say that’s the same then I think you’d have to consider some of what I did in the past as working for HYDRA. The day after I saw him get dragged away, we had our pre-mission vaccinations, and then… I don’t remember anything until after we were back from the successful mission a week later. And I mean  _ anything _ . I started looking to get out shortly after that, but I think it took me a while before I stopped seeing HYDRA’s fingers in the jobs I did- not that I realized at the time, but there were definitely a couple of years where every job I did had some of those same assholes calling the shots.” Eliot scrubbed his hand down his face, shielding his eyes from the light of the apartment. Over time, they’d all shared bits and pieces about the darker parts of their pasts, but each of them had things in their past that they’d glossed over, and having to dig into this part of his own past was bringing a lot of trauma to the surface.

Parker was quiet for a moment more, and then nodded decisively. “Okay, that makes sense, I’ll believe you. You always were good at judging people’s intentions anyway, I can trust that you’ve got the right idea of him now too.”

Eliot’s smile was grateful, but small and tired. “Thank you Parker. So- Hardison! What are we going to do about this, do you think?”

“Well I think I looked up that address for that apartment we found for Yasha in Romania, and I’ve booked us a few tickets- first class baby!- for tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll be able to find him first, since we know he wasn’t ever actually in Austria. And if we don’t make it there first… well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, but I think we’ll be able to figure out where they’ve taken him and follow.”

~*~*~

Flying internationally would have been more fun if they’d been able to fly together, but in the past couple of years Hardison had gotten more careful about making sure that the three of them were seen to travel separately. Usually he’d have them on different flights entirely, but given that they were racing against the entire world to get to Yasha first, and some of the people that they were racing against were already in Europe, he’d compromised and gotten them seats on the same flight. Boarding the plane, the three of them had expected a lonely flight, but when Eliot saw the size of the first class bathroom amenities, he’d found a way to communicate that fact to Hardison and Parker, and the three of them had joined the Mile High club together (maybe Parker was flexible enough that they could have made it work even with less-roomy facilities, but Eliot wasn’t much in the mood for that if he was going to be stuck in the same seat for more than ten hours afterwards). Eliot even made sure to tip the flight attendant for looking the other way; Hardison might not have learned proper tipping etiquette but Eliot knew better.

Settling into their own seats for the remainder of the flight, Eliot knew that Hardison was doing his best to track activity around Yasha from the air. In-flight WiFi wasn’t the best but it was a far sight better than not being able to use any devices in the air at all, and Hardison knew well how to cover his tracks. 

“Looks like there have been a lot of tips on Yasha’s whereabouts, but for the most part they’re nowhere near where we know our boy to be. Some of these tips are even from the US, which is bogus because there’s no way he could have gotten back to the US with his face being everywhere so he couldn’t board a plane,” Hardison’s voice came over the comms. “I’ll try to flood the tip line with some more reports that are a little more plausible but aren’t actually in Bucharest, see if we can keep them from being able to verify the tip if an accurate one comes in, give us a little more of a head start.”

“Thank you Hardison, that sounds like a good plan.” Eliot’s voice was rough; digging so deep into his past had made sleep difficult the night before. “And… I think I have an idea for what to do once we’re on the ground, but I don’t think the two of you are going to like it.”

“Are you going to say what I think you’re going to say?” Parker asked. “Because a couple years ago I did notice some physical similarities between you and this guy we’re looking to help, but given everything he must have survived there’s no way he isn’t enhanced, and you trying to con law enforcement into thinking that  _ you _ are Bucky Barnes when you aren’t enhanced really seems like a bad idea, Eliot.” 

Even though they couldn’t see him, Eliot grinned wryly. “Got it in one, Parker. And maybe I’m not enhanced, but I’m still a lot more capable than most of the people they’ll ever have dealt with.”

“It mostly sounds like a good plan,” Hardison said, “except that I just got an alert that a couple of the Avengers caught wind of this and are looking for him too. Specifically Captain America and Red Falcon - the two Avengers that have actually interacted with your boy Yasha in person in the past. If  _ they _ see you, they’ll know something’s up immediately.”

“Dammit Hardison, don’t go borrowing trouble! Yes, that is something worth being concerned about in the long run, but we’re a ways away from having to scrap that plan just yet.” Eliot’s growled epithet made his partners chuckle over the comms, which was part of the intent, so with a small smile he sat back in his seat to finish out the flight.


	3. Three Card Monte - Yasha

He’d never be able to repay Eliot enough for helping him after HYDRA fell. Without that help, he would have had to risk finding HYDRA safehouses to get his own supplies, cash, and shelter; instead, he’d gotten a false identity to use in Romania, an apartment, a phone, classes at the local culinary institute… he had options. All because he happened to run into the right person at the right time as he’d been leaving the Smithsonian exhibit on Captain America two years ago.

The three of them had been walking down the street when he passed him, and he could feel the shorter of the two men stiffening as he registered Yasha’s presence. Somehow, he knew that it wasn’t HYDRA, and he let himself be drawn into conversation. Eliot had taken him to lunch, introduced his partners, and checked which name he wanted to use. His conversations with the man on the Helicarrier had been ringing in his ears -  _ ‘Who the hell is Bucky?’  _ \- and when he recalled being called Yasha once, a long time ago, in a place he could barely remember, Eliot had grinned with familiarity. They didn’t linger on the past for long before Eliot had asked his partner to find someplace for Yasha to stay for a while, listing off a few different possible cities; apparently they were all cities where Eliot had a contact he could trust to help out a bit, and in the case of Bucharest, his contact was the head of a culinary institute that was partnered with the very one Eliot had attended.

Over the past two years he’d gotten some of his memories back. Most of them were from  _ before _ , from when he knew the tiny, skinny Stevie who stuffed newspapers in his shoes; he guessed it was because HYDRA had wanted to obscure those memories the most. But about six months after getting set up in his apartment in Romania, he’d started remembering other things from his time in HYDRA, longer periods of time where he’d been out of cryofreeze so that they could take advantage of some of his other skills. The first of those, he’d actually remembered Natalia, and realized he’d been one of the people who trained that redhead assassin who’d been working with Steve, but shortly after that he’d also remembered meeting Eliot.

This had prompted a poorly-timed phone call. Because of the circumstances, Hardison had set things up so that any time Yasha’s phone called out to the team in the US, it had priority, so he’d been patched through to the comms automatically while Eliot was in the middle of a job. Once he’d finished, though, Eliot had given Yasha his undivided attention.

“I remembered you. You- you wanted to help. You were good, but even between the two of us, they had enough of an advantage that it wouldn’t have been enough.” Yasha’s voice had shuddered. “I didn’t… I knew enough, at the time. I remembered the chair, and the cryofreeze. And I knew that you were good enough that they might try to take you too. I told you no. You… you listened. But you wanted to help.”

International call patched through a com system that it was, Eliot’s habitual growl crackled with a bit of static when he responded, but Hardison was good at what he did and for the most part the line was clear. “Yeah. I could tell something was off about everything when I saw you. You really only just remember all that?”

“...  _ they _ made it so I couldn’t remember.”

Eliot had grunted in response. They’d talked for a bit longer after that, but with the time difference, it wasn’t long before they’d disconnected the call. For the most part, they didn’t talk often; Eliot and his partners were frequently busy, and Yasha was just trying to figure out who he was, and didn’t want to have anybody else trying to tell him that. Eliot was pretty good about it, but with Steve having constantly pushed that his name was Bucky, Yasha was a bit wary of letting anyone who knew him get too close.

That didn’t stop him from jolting awake from a full sleep when he got the call. 

“We’re on our way, something went down and your place in Bucharest isn’t burned yet but I don’t know how long that’s gonna last. Your face is in the news. Try to lie low for a couple of days until we can get there.”

“Why?”

“Because they think you’ve done something you clearly haven’t. Something strange is going on, and you don’t deserve to get caught up in it. At the very least, what Toby has been relaying to me from your work at the culinary institute shows you’re not just who they’re trying to say you are, but HYDRA is a hot-button topic these days no matter how you swing it and they are gunning for you.”

“... Shouldn’t I just leave?”

Eliot sighed. “Normally I’d say yes. With everything that’s going on, though, it’s pretty obvious that someone is trying to flush you out of hiding, and they won’t stop until they find you, and that means I want you to stay there for now until we can get there.”

Yasha could hear the boarding call through the phone before Eliot hung up abruptly, and found himself facing hours of anticipation and boredom before they’d finally arrive. 

~*~*~

The knock on the door several hours later was a relief. He’d exercised, showered, slept, and was starting to go stir crazy from the feeling that he couldn’t leave, even though most of the time he would have been fine hanging out in his apartment for another week. Looking through the peephole showed it was Eliot’s partner Parker at the door, duffel bag at her side. 

“Come on, are you ready to jump off some buildings?” She shook the duffel bag. “I’ll tell you the rest of the plan when we get back to the hotel.”

He quickly opened the door to let her in, and once he’d locked it again she immediately started dressing him in a harness matching hers. “Jumping off of buildings?”

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights, too!”

“I fell out of a moving train in the Alps and survived, I think I’ll be fine.” He grinned at her as she finished hooking up his harness. “Will we be meeting up with Eliot at the hotel?”

“Briefly, before he goes all hero on us.” Parker made a moue of distaste at the thought, before grinning at him. “Come on, let’s go!”

Using the roofs and her climbing gear to get a few streets away from his apartment before making their way to ground level was a nice rush. Most of the time he’d been in Bucharest, he’d done his best to be as normal as possible, so being able to let go a little bit was exhilarating. As they ducked into an alley to take off the harnesses and change before heading into the hotel, he grinned at Parker. “I don’t think I’ve ever done anything quite like that before!”

“Ooh, want to do it again? We could check out a museum, steal some of the art, it’ll be fun!”

“Maybe sometime when I don’t have the world on the lookout for my face.”

“I’ll hold you to that!” She grinned at him as she shimmied into a slinky red dress, shoving a garment back for him as well. “Put it on - it’s tailored for Eliot but I think it’ll fit you just fine.”

Putting on the suit brought up his memories of wearing his dress uniform, but even that wasn’t this fancy. Once he was dressed, he looked at the provided shoes, but ended up shaking his head. “Think we can get away with me wearing my combat boots? I don’t think those will fit.”

Parker stepped back and cocked her head. “It’s not too obvious, especially if we sell the rest of it well enough. I’m going to be loud and distracting and happy, and you’re going to be my date who’s taking me back to the hotel after a fun night out, so I don’t think many people will be looking at your shoes. Oh, and here!” She dropped something into his hand that matched his skin. “It’s an earbud, it’ll tie you into our comms!”

He put it into his ear. “Hello?”

“Yasha. I’m glad you’re alright.” There was Eliot’s voice, low and strong. “How was the trip?”

“It was fun! I think most of the time I’ve just used brute force to get places; climbing things and jumping off of buildings on purpose is new!”

Hardison’s voice broke in. “So now that you have a friend to jump off of buildings with, will you leave me be? Woman I know you like to do it but we can find other date activities to do together that won’t involve my fear of heights!”

Parker snorted. “Like I’ll ever give up an excuse to get your adrenaline spiking, the sex is always fantastic afterwards.”

“I don’t care how good the sex is, I’m tired of jumping off of buildings and screaming the whole way down!”

“You know you don’t mind it nearly as much as you say you do,” Eliot chimed in. Yasha felt like he could hear the smirk over the comms. “Alright, now that you’re all set up, let’s get you up to the room so I can go stake out your apartment.”

“Staking out my apartment? What for?”

“We look enough alike that I’m hoping they’ll mistake me for you long enough that Parker and Hardison can get you further out of the way, make them think they flushed you out when it’s really just me.”

Yasha shifted uncomfortably at that, but there was no more time to talk about it; Parker had finished stowing the gear away, and was now draping herself against him like a giddy, drunk socialite. He noted that she was good at using her body to guide where she wanted him to go, like a dancer, ‘stumbling’ and leaning against him so that he made his way right where she wanted him to. He didn’t keep track of exactly what she was saying as they made their way into the hotel lobby; enough to smile and nod as she kept up her happy monologue about the date they were pretending to be coming back from, but his primary focus was on situational awareness. Two years of relative peace wasn’t so much that he’d forgotten how to case a room without anyone being the wiser.

Only moments later he was glad to have done so, catching sight of someone with military bearing coming out of the bar. He ducked his face into Parker’s neck, acting like her love-drunk counterpart, and muttered, “there are some people here already that it might be worth keeping an eye on.” Parker nodded her head just enough for him to feel it, even while she continued her loud, drunken giggling. Thankfully, enough people were convinced of their amorous display that their discomfort kept them from looking too closely, and they had an elevator car to themselves.

Parker almost made a move to separate, but he carefully nudged her against a wall of the elevator car. “Cameras”, he muttered, “we should be consistent until we’re in the room itself.”

Hardison’s voice came over the comms. “Now that had better all be for show, she ain’t your girl, my man Yasha.”

The adrenaline was starting to catch up to him; he started laughing into Parker’s neck. “Now I ain’t never poached another guy’s dame”, he said, unaware of the accent coloring his voice. “Not unless she wanted it, that is.”

Eliot and Parker both started laughing as well, Eliot’s laugh a low chuckle, Parker’s a higher giggle. “Yeah I don’t know Hardison, I might just want to take someone new for a spin”, she teased.

“Now come on, y’all know this ain’t the time to be negotiating the non-monogamous nature of our relationship! We’re on a job!” Hardison sounded a bit put-out, but mostly amused as well. 

The bell rang for their floor, and Yasha and Parker stumbled out of the elevator, finally reaching the room where they could drop the act. Hardison was sitting at a desk strewn with tech, but Eliot rose from the dining table and embraced Parker before turning to Yasha and clapping his hands around Yasha’s shoulders.. 

“I’m glad you’re alright; Hardison has already picked up chatter that they’ve received a tip you’re in the area. I was concerned we weren’t going to make it in time.”

“If I hadn’t fed them a few false leads they might have gotten there earlier”, Hardison broke in. The echo in the comms was weird, and Yasha resisted the urge to rub at his ear. “But as it is, it looks like we have enough time to switch you out. Good job avoiding the cameras, by the way.”

Yasha ducked his head. “Practically second nature at this point; they did a good job of discouraging me from getting caught, even as technology got better and more ubiquitous.” From the way Eliot grimaced but Parker and Hardison didn’t bat a lash, he guessed that Eliot had been the one to look over most of the files relating to him when Natalia dropped all of the data from SHIELD and HYDRA’s servers. “So”, he continued, “Parker said you would fill me in on the plan once we got back here.”

“They want to try to capture Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier? We’ll give them someone to bring in.” Eliot gestured between the two of them. “You already know we’re pretty close in build. We walk pretty much the same - once you trained it into me I never forgot, it sometimes gets in the way when I’m trying to grift. My hair is a bit lighter than yours, and our faces look a little different, but if I’m where they’re expecting to find you and I look enough like who they’re expecting to find, I don’t think they’ll question it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I might be unintentionally adding some Eliot/Yasha vibes here; if it gets much stronger all on its own, I'll tag it, but Eliot/Yasha isn't going to be a main relationship. I have someone in mind for Yasha but I'm waiting to tag it until I have a better idea of the shape of the fic - I have a lot of little plot and character development points in my outline and I'm not sure that I'll have all of them in the same fic all at once, so I don't want to jump the gun and add a ship that won't show up for a while.


	4. No Plan Survives First Contact With Hostile Forces - Eliot

Waiting was hard, even knowing that his partners had his back. The previous night, they’d dressed him in Yasha’s clothes, set him up with a few audiovisual bugs and trackers, and then talked strategy. 

“The problem is”, Parker had explained to Yasha, “the person we want to run this con on hasn’t given us enough information to find out who they are, and we’re facing a bit of a time constraint; because of that, we don’t know what they want- other than you. But if Eliot gets taken in your place, then we can hamstring whatever plans they have involving you, and you’ll be right there with us to help us get him back.”

Yasha had opened his mouth to say something but Hardison had cut him off. “I even made up a metal glove to make it look like Eliot has your metal hand and everything! See- it doesn’t go up as far as yours does but it doesn’t exactly need to, the end of it will be covered by his sleeve. Anyone who would know the difference would have to know you personally.”

It hadn’t taken much more to convince Yasha of the plan; he’d said that even the brief meeting in DC two years ago had demonstrated that Eliot’s partners were consummate professionals. For a moment he’d still tried objecting on the basis that he wasn’t worth it, that he deserved to pay for all the people he’d killed, but Eliot had sat across from him, clasping one hand around the back of Yasha’s neck, and pressed their foreheads together. 

“I have done more evil of my own volition than you ever have. There were things I did- choices I made- and they will haunt me for the rest of my life, but I was still the one who did those things, killed those people; it’s part of why I prefer not to use guns, or any lethal force in general if I can avoid it. I’ve seen your files. You didn’t have agency. You didn’t have a choice. This was not even a matter of “following orders”, you were brainwashed and kept prisoner. You were not the assassin- you were the weapon. You have even more right than I ever did to live a free and happy life- not that I’m complaining”, and at this Eliot had broken the moment, leaning back to grin at his partners. “I wouldn’t give them up for the world. So don’t you go saying that you deserve this.”

But that had been last night, and now Eliot was in position, waiting for someone to come for Yasha, so they all could get that one step closer to whoever was behind all this. 

There were footsteps in the hall outside Yasha’s apartment, and Eliot faded into the corner as best he could, waiting to see who it was. The muted red, white, and blue of Captain America’s uniform as he walked into the apartment like  _ he _ owned it (he definitely didn’t, this had been one of Eliot’s safehouses before he’d given it to Yasha) made Eliot grimace; not as bad as when he’d made his original reappearance a few years, but he still found it grating. 

“Man, how did I miss that, it’s Captain America, he’s not known for being subtle! I knew he’d gotten a tip-off, but I didn’t see anything to indicate he’d actually made a move!” Hardison’s indignation made Eliot wince.

He watched as the superhero started poking around the apartment. It was one of his older boltholes, and not as nice as the ones the team had set up more recently; Hardison liked the finer things in life and that extended to when hiding out and laying low. While there were signs of occupancy- a kitchen with dishes in the sink, an unmade bed, a book on an end table with a bookmark sticking out- there were very few things here that Eliot hadn’t bought for the place himself, only a few possessions that would indicate the real occupant, and he bristled to see Rogers leafing through one of the only ones, a journal Yasha had left on the bookcase. 

“Understood,” Rogers said, pulling his attention away from his idle perusal. He was clearly talking to someone via his own earpiece; Eliot could already hear Hardison tapping away at his keyboard to try and figure out who else they were up against. 

The man turned to see him, and it was a testament to how strong the resemblance between Eliot and Yasha was that he took a step towards him before noticing the swap. The moment he realized, his back had stiffened before he slammed Eliot into the wall by his neck. “Where is he?!”

“But see, what did I tell you?” Hardison pointed out. “There are only, like, two people in the world who know your friend’s face well enough to not be fooled by this, and that’s who shows up first, I told y’all this might not be the best plan!”

“He’s fine, I’m here to help, I got him away from here last night.” Eliot surreptitiously made four quick taps near one of the additional audio hookups- H in Morse code- to acknowledge that he’d heard the man even though he couldn’t say anything to him aloud. Once he’d done that, Eliot took advantage of the situation to palm one of Hardison’s bugs and attach it to the outdated dog tags Rogers wore, disguising it as a futile attempt to remove the superhero’s arm so he could breathe. 

“And how am I supposed to trust you? How do you even know him- how did you find him?” The man in front of him was quivering with tension. 

“I ran into him a couple years ago in DC, thought I’d help him out. Didn’t really realize at the time that he was Bucky Barnes, seemed like he was just another vet like me who needed somewhere to recover.” Eliot’s mind raced, trying to find a way to essentially grift Captain America and get him to go along with the plan. In the background, he could hear his team and Yasha talking, and the distress in Yasha’s voice when presented with the man he’d known from childhood reinforced that, made or not, Eliot had made the right choice to get Yasha out of harm’s way first. “Somebody wants him, and I don’t know who or why, but maybe you and I can apply the right kind of leverage to figure those things out so we can clear your buddy’s name.”

The arm holding him against the wall tightened, then relaxed as Steve Rogers sagged with relief. Something about his posture made it clear that he was getting a glimpse of the man out of time himself, and not just the superhero. But then he straightened, putting back on the metaphorical mask to match the uniform, before stiffening at another sound from outside the apartment. 

“We’ve got to get out of here-“ Captain America’s voice cut off as smoke grenades and flash-bangs were thrown into the apartment. 

Eliot cursed under his breath as the superhero in front of him tossed away the first grenades and started fighting the Special Forces team sent to retrieve Yasha. “Just let them take me in! That’s the whole point, to figure out why-”

“No- I’m with you to the end of the line!” 

His eyes were distant even as he kept fighting. From Yasha’s choked-off gasp over the comms, it was probably something from his and Steve’s shared past; it seemed as though the immediate urgency of the situation had made Steve Rogers somehow forget it wasn’t actually Bucky at his side. 

“It looks like this is going to get worse before it gets better”, Eliot muttered, knowing the comms would pick it up, but secure that his momentary ally was distracted enough not to notice. “Just keep track of my position, so we can all get out of here when the time is right.” Then he dove into the fray, hoping to mitigate some of the damage that so frequently followed in the wake of superheros. 

~*~*~

He’d never been more glad to have Hardison on the comms as when he was trying to redirect Captain America away from more populated areas, while simultaneously fighting off the forces he’d initially intended to just surrender to. At one point, it seemed like they were going to end up in a tunnel, surrounded by civilians and commuters, but thankfully they’d avoided putting those people at risk. Eliot grew progressively more irritated over the course of the fight at how little the superhero cared about the collateral damage he caused, and found himself spending most of the fight working on damage mitigation. This was made even more complicated by the arrival of another enhanced individual, this one blaming Yasha for his father’s death in the bombing. Thankfully, Captain America had brought an ally of his own, and Eliot wasn’t stuck by himself in a fight he couldn’t win. 

Hardison let out a crow of delight that Eliot couldn’t quite ignore. “First Falcon, now this! Y’all- we’ve got War Machine coming to join the party, it made me so happy when I saw him bring out the suit for the first time at Stark Expo!”

“Dammit Hardison, stop geeking out! I can’t quite keep up with the original superhero himself!”

“My bad- look, War Machine will be there any moment, and with that and the Special Forces guys, you should be surrounded and in custody any minute now.” And just as Hardison finished his sentence, Eliot could see the cars blocking them in, weapons pointed in his direction.

At least in this, Yasha’s fearsome reputation had been working in their favor; the way Eliot had been restrained separately from the others left him free to continue planning the next steps of the job with Yasha and his team without anyone being the wiser. “Hardison, do you happen to have anything on what they’re planning to do with me, now that they’re bringing me in?”

“Looks like they want to do a psychological evaluation; they called in a guy named Theo Broussard. The UN wouldn’t call him in unless they’d already vetted him, and I tried to look a bit deeper but he seems pretty clean. There are some intelligence operatives as well, and- and Tony Stark seems to have flown in. You know, I think he’s the one who’s been trying to keep Ross in check, he’s been playing the game a long time.”

“Anyone that’s raising any flags? It’d be nice to know who we were up against at some point soon…”

“I’m running programs against the HYDRA data we have on file to see if there are any matches, but so far I haven’t had… any… luck. Or. Well. I hadn’t.” Over the comms, Eliot heard Harrison’s typing come to an abrupt halt as he processed whatever had come up. 

“Dammit Hardison, what did you find?”

“See the thing is though, it doesn’t make sense!” The sounds of typing resumed. “I know how he works when he wants to ruin someone, and this whole convoluted plot ain’t it!”

“Who?!”

“Tony freaking Stark, that’s who! The moment I started comparing the name Stark against the HYDRA files I got a match, and I’d been doing it more to be thorough than because I expected to get anywhere with it, but- oh. Oh shit.”

The comms were silent for a moment, and then Eliot heard Yasha’s voice. “I did that. His parents. That was my mission.”

“Don’t forget what I told you earlier; if that was a mission from HYDRA, then it wasn’t you.” Eliot’s voice was rough; this entire situation was hitting a bit too close to home. “I hope Stark can be made to see it that way… but hey, at least we can be reasonably certain he’s one of the good guys, can you imagine how fucked we’d be if Stark was HYDRA?”

Hardison made a low moan of despair. “There’d be nowhere to run! Between his tech skills, his interpersonal connections, and just how many different industries he’s still involved in, if he were HYDRA we- we couldn’t even escape to space! Oh why’d you have to go and say something like that…” 

“But we can be reasonably sure he’s not HYDRA, so we’re fine!” Parker’s voice was chipper. “Not to mention that it would only be a problem if we ever got on his radar in a bad way, which- everyone we’ve ever investigated for a grievance against him has lied to us, so we’ve never even tried to go after him.”

Eliot chuckled. “See, Hardison? Nothing to worry about.”


	5. Dealbreaker -Tony

Tony was exhausted. He hadn’t slept a full night in weeks, putting all of his effort into the Accords and his Binary Augmented Retro Framing system, and right at that moment it seemed that the rest of the world- and Steve Rogers in particular- existed just to make his life more difficult. 

He’d let JARVIS do the initial work on the HYDRA data dump two years ago. When he’d lost his AI- his friend- to Ultron, he couldn’t bring himself to make FRIDAY wade through the rest of it, after what little he’d already seen. It wasn’t hard for him to reach the conclusion that Barnes was only there by force- electroshock treatments, cryogenic stasis, descriptions of command words, none of those indicated that a person had made the choice to be there themselves. Because of all that, and as a favor to his former teammate, he’d already been making his way to Europe to help deal with the fallout from Barnes’ sudden reappearance. 

When he landed, and was told about the mess Steve had made in Romania trying to keep Barnes out of custody, he’d been more surprised by how contained the damage was than by the fact Steve had gone after Barnes; it was a well-documented fact at this point that Steve seemed to find any opportunity he could to sidestep the chain of command, especially when his childhood friend was involved. Damage control, though; Steve had always been pretty bad about collateral damage back when Tony had still been on the team, but in the past year since Tony had retired fully into a consulting and support position with the Avengers, the problem had gotten markedly worse. 

As Steve and Sam were escorted in, he caught the tail end of a conversation between them. 

“-him, why were we even going to the trouble?” That was Sam, his efforts to keep Steve in check getting ever more futile. 

“I don’t know, it was like I forgot it wasn’t-“ Steve cut off his murmured response there, and Tony took a quick note of it before acting like he hadn’t. 

“Secretary Ross wants you both prosecuted. Thankfully, you didn’t manage to get any civilians caught in the crossfire, and even the property damage was less than we usually see when you’re involved, so he doesn’t have as much of a leg to stand on.” He nodded pointedly at Steve first, then Sam, “your shield, and your wings, they’re grounded for the time being; I had to give him something, but I don’t think he’ll push for more at this point.”

Steve scowled, and beside him Natasha said lightly, “technically, those are both the government’s property.”

Not even bothering to make sure Steve and Sam would follow, Tony and Natasha walked to the office set up for them. The office itself was entirely walled with clear plexiglass- although he thought he saw power connections, indicating that they could possibly turn opaque if necessary. Outside the office, one wall was made up almost entirely of large screens, each showing security footage from a different feed around the facility. Natasha split off here, nominally to keep an eye on the security feeds, but really to give him a moment alone with Steve. 

“Is Pepper here?”

Tony steeled himself before replying to Steve’s question. “No, this isn’t a Stark Industries issue, why would she- oh, you mean, for me? No- no. Even after getting rid of all my extra suits, there was HYDRA- thank you for that, by the way, that was a very busy two weeks of overnighters right around our anniversary- and then Ultron, and I realized that I was never going to stop being involved in superhero business in one way or another, and that she deserved better. She’s focusing on being CEO, and I’ve been focusing on these Accords you hate so much.” Tony scrubbed a hand down his face. 

“I’m so sorry Tony, I didn’t know.”

Tony took a deep breath. He might not have been an active Avenger anymore, but he’d built the Compound  _ for _ the Avengers, financed them, equipped them… he was there all the time, and he and Pepper had been broken up for months, and Steve only cared enough now to ask after her. It rankled, knowing that Steve had never really considered him anything more than an irritating colleague. “It’s alright. How was Aunt Peggy’s funeral? I wanted to be there, but you and I both know I can’t help to draw attention, and I didn’t want to do that to her.”

“ _ Aunt _ Peggy?”

Tony closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “We were closer when I was younger- she was the first person to teach me self-defense- but yeah, Aunt Peggy, known her since I was little, I can’t believe we never talked about that before.” He could, actually; he couldn’t remember when he and Steve had ever had a conversation about how Tony had grown up that hadn’t devolved into arguing about Howard.

“I- it was fine. Sad. Did right by her.” Steve looked uncomfortable. Good- turnabout was fair play after all. 

“Good, good, so can I talk to you, about the Accords? About why they’re necessary? Because there are things that happen, things we need to do, but sometimes the people who get caught in the crossfire-“

“If I see a situation pointed south, I can’t ignore it. Tony, these Accords, they’d put someone else in charge of decisions that I can’t trust in anyone else’s hands.” Steve was unrepentant, and Tony gritted his teeth. 

“So far,” he said, placing a pen on the table and pushing it and the paperwork in Steve’s direction, “there’s nothing that can’t be undone, if you sign. Once you sign- not only can I convince them to retroactively make this an authorized mission to bring Barnes in, but you-“ and here he poked Steve in the chest for emphasis, “-could be involved in the decision-making process, help them determine which things fall under Avengers jurisdiction.”

Steve grimaced, looking away from Tony, his shoulders stiff.

“...do you not think that if you asked, I wouldn’t do anything in my power to help your friend? He’s a prisoner of war and a hero”, and here Tony caught himself before he could get too loud and impassioned. “I’ve been funding and equipping your little HYDRA-hunting expeditions for two years now, of course I want to help him.”

“...Of course I know you’d help,” Steve hesitantly replied, and internally Tony flinched at the slight doubt in Steve’s voice. Steve turned away from Tony, so that all he could see was that broad back. “Of course I do. But the Accords- there would be safeguards, right?”

“A little rule in politics, anything can be amended. Even Wanda could be reinstated”, and here Tony realized he’d misstepped. 

“Wanda? What about Wanda?”

“After Laos, the international concern about her- Vision is keeping her company at the compound.”

“It’s internment, Tony, it’s confining someone for something they can’t help-“

“Sometimes people need to stay home, for their own good and for everyone else’s, and there are far worse places to do it than the compound! If I keep her there, I can prevent anyone else from getting hurt!”

“You don’t even like her!”

“Of course I don’t like her! The first time we met, she dug into my mind and scooped out my biggest trauma and my darkest fears! But **_I_** am not letting my personal feelings get in the way of the current situation!”

“It sounds like exactly that, she’s just a kid and you’re holding her mistakes against her, keeping her locked up!”

Tony closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m giving you the options I can. I think these are the options that would do the most good for the most people. Sign it, or don’t; I did my best.”  _ Something worse is coming, and I’m trying to be prepared, _ he thought to himself, but sharing this paranoia had backfired on him before. 

When Steve turned away with no response, Tony sighed, then left the office to join Natasha in observing Barnes. Something about the way she held herself put Tony on edge. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t really tell from here- I can only barely see him in that cell, with that camera angle, and the way his hair is falling in his face, but something doesn’t sit right about him. I’m not sure what.”

Startled, he straightened. “It has to be Barnes- Steve brought him in, if anyone would recognize him-“

“I know- I know. Which is why it’s so disconcerting. What am I picking up on that he isn’t- and why?”

But they didn’t have any longer to talk before the psychologist began his line of questioning. 


	6. Age of the Geek - Yasha

It had been exhilarating, watching Hardison guide Eliot through the streets of Bucharest, and every time Hardison had cued Eliot to change direction and guide Steve in a different direction, Yasha had felt a combination of amusement and exasperation that seemed familiar, reminding him… reminding him of when he  _ was _ Bucky, both running around after that scrappy boy who’d fall over in a stiff breeze but would pick a fight with anyone, and corralling the impossible man he’d become while running with the Howling Commandos. Now, they were following the motorcade holding Eliot- taking a different route, of course, since they were able to track where he was going, and didn’t really want anyone to catch wind of their intentions. 

Seated next to him in the technologically-advanced van that had been introduced to him as Lucille, Parker listened to the comms and tried to piece together information, but he could tell she was getting frustrated. He put a hand on her knee, drawing her attention. 

“Did you hear that? At the beginning?”

Yasha grimaced. “Yeah. Honestly it makes me even more sure that Steve doesn’t see  _ me _ anymore, just some… romanticized memory of who I used to be” Glancing to the side, he continued, “if you hadn’t been here, if you hadn’t warned me, I would have just run. And I wouldn’t have noticed where I was going.”

“You would have taken the tunnel. Like Cap seemed to want to do.” Parker was quiet when she responded, focused on him but giving him room to collect his thoughts and speak. Glancing at her face, though, showed she was no less intensely focused than she’d been before- she’d just redirected that focus to look at him. 

“A chance to get lost in the crowd; if I grabbed a motorcycle, then I’d have better agility, more options getting out of there. Disabled vehicles could provide roadblocks and cover.”

“It wouldn’t have worked. Not this time, not with how many resources they were using for this.”

Yasha grinned wryly. “Yeah, I could tell. Still wouldn't have deterred me, not if I’d felt trapped. But- that’s why I’m so glad you’re here.” He closed his eyes and rested his head against the wall of the van. “You kept me from doing that- kept Steve from doing that- kept me from hurting more people.” He looked at her again. “And this time I  _ would _ have been responsible. Thank you.”

Parker smiled widely at him, her eyes squinting. “I’m glad he was right about you- usually Eliot is suspicious of everything, but he wasn’t suspicious of you, and I had to be the suspicious one just in case, but it makes me glad he was right. He could use more friends. He’s got us”, and here Parker gestured between herself and Hardison, “and he has some friends from  _ Before _ ”, and here the emphasis made it clear she was referring to before any of them had known each other, “but I think you’re the most like him. I think you’ll be good for him.”

He ducked his head, a small smile on his face. He didn’t know who he’d be now, two years on from the fall of HYDRA, if he hadn’t run into them; he knew he owed them dearly for how much and how well he’d been able to recover on his own.

He also knew they would never, ever collect.

~*~*~

The van pulled into the parking lot of the facility where Eliot was being held. One of the screens showed the feed from the bug Eliot had planted on Steve, still wearing those dog tags. 

As Steve walked through the facility, they could hear him carry on a quiet conversation with Sam Wilson beside him. 

“Even if we’re here, it seems like we’ve got allies on our side in this”, Steve was telling Wilson. Hardison scoffed, and Yasha silently agreed; just because Eliot had brought his team to support Yasha, didn’t mean they were on  _ Captain America’s  _ side. “They got there first and took Bucky… somewhere, left their own man in his place to take the initial fall and gather information, from what I could gather.”

“If it wasn’t even him, why were we even going to the trouble?” Wilson was clearly frustrated with the situation, but trying to stay calm. 

“I don’t know, it was like I forgot it wasn’t-“ Steve cut off abruptly as the camera feed showed none other than Tony Stark. Hardison started listing his accomplishments in artificial intelligence, robotics, and green energy, but subsided after an affectionate “dammit Hardison!” from Eliot, returning instead to the task of trying to hack into the facility’s security cameras. 

“I don’t know if I can do this; these buildings are usually like the building from our first job- no Steranko, but needing an on-site, direct hookup. But maybe if we’re lucky- oh,  _ hello _ beautiful!”

A new voice spoke over their comms. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”

“And why not? I just want to keep an eye on our man on the inside, you can understand that, can’t you? Listen all I want to do is hook into the security systems you’re already in- I won’t touch any files, won’t mess with you or anything else”, said Hardison with a grin. “And may I say your code is just elegant!”

“Is that an attempt at flattery? As an artificial intelligence, I don’t experience the emotional or physiological responses necessary for flattery to be successful.” 

Taken aback, Yasha glanced between Parker and Hardison before he spoke. “I’m the one they expect to be in there”, he offered. “I’m Barnes. I wasn’t in Vienna. Parker, Hardison, Eliot- they’re just trying to help everyone they can.”

Everyone was silent for a moment, waiting for her to respond. “Boss was just saying something about there being less damage than he usually sees when Captain Rogers is involved- is that because of you?”

Hardison laughed. “Yes! So you see, I’ve been tracking our man Eliot on the GPS, and whenever it looked like the fight was going to run someplace more populated, I redirected him somewhere more isolated. Where Eliot led, everyone else followed, less property damage and fewer casualties all around!”

“...Boss is always stressed by the damage Captain Rogers causes on missions. My directive is to assist Tony Stark in whatever capacity I can, but I’ve been unable to help with that particular issue.” A brief pause, before she spoke again, her voice somehow warmer despite her claims she lacked the capacity to experience emotions. “Oh, but I found his files on you- he approved greatly of your work with VerdAgra, hired the scientist you helped and asked her to work in the Intellicrops division of Stark Industries! Yes, I can connect you to the local server.” 

A couple of screens blinked to life, showing the security footage Hardison had been trying to access. “Honestly I was not expecting that to work as well as it did, but I’m not complaining. Do you have a name?”

“He calls me FRIDAY.”

Eliot’s voice came over the comms. “Great, Hardison successfully flirted with an artificial intelligence, he’s gonna be insufferable for weeks.” In contrast to the words themselves, his voice was warm and affectionate. 

“Age of the geek, baby!” Hardison couldn’t keep back his grin.

Eliot snorted. “Miss FRIDAY, thank you for helping out my partners, we were caught a bit flat-footed by the situation and might be in a bit over our heads but I couldn’t bear to sit by and watch my friend Yasha there get hurt.”

They would have continued chatting with FRIDAY and casually investigating, but the monitor tuned to the bug Eliot had planted on Steve was showing a conversation that seemed like it might be relevant. 

As the conversation continued, the people in the van got more and more uncomfortable. “I can kind of see where Captain Rogers is coming from”, Parker said, “because I think it comes from the same motivation that makes me want to take a new job and fix things for someone- but we make sure the only people who get hurt when we do that, are the people who made things hard for our clients in the first place.”

“How could he have changed like this?” Yasha’s voice was full of pain. “He used to be all about fighting injustice- fighting for the little guy- but if he’s causing so much damage with so little accountability...”

They continued listening to the rest of the conversation, until Wanda was mentioned, and Yasha jerked upright. When Tony mentioned her digging into his mind, he blanched, one hand gripping his seat. “Oh Stevie, no… tell me you didn’t”, he begged the friend that couldn’t hear him. 

Hardison glanced away from the video feeds, pulling up the profile on Wanda Maximoff. Yasha looked at the photo and sharply inhaled. “I recognize her. She’s definitely HYDRA, through and through. How could Stevie be working with HYDRA?”

The artificial voice spoke again. “Wanda Maximoff, joined HYDRA alongside her twin with the purpose of getting revenge on Boss for her parents’ deaths. At the time of their death, Boss had already pulled Stark Industries out of the weapons business, and the missile in question had been part of an older shipment sold by a former executive of Stark Industries. Gained abilities, including telekinesis, from experiments involving the staff that Loki brought to Earth in 2010.”

“So what you’re saying is, Mister ‘I’m with you till the end of the line’ over there is defending someone who joined HYDRA willingly?” Parker’s voice was sharp, and Yasha flinched beside her. “The same HYDRA that hurt  _ you _ , his  _ friend _ , for seventy years?! You don’t- you don’t  _ do _ that!”

“Boss won’t let me bar her from the Avengers compound or Stark Tower. He says it’s because he knows he’d have to argue with Rogers.” FRIDAY’s voice was regretful. 

“You’re not wrong to want to do that though.” Yasha was quiet but resolute. “She enjoys it, the way she twists a person’s mind. If she hadn’t enjoyed it so much, they might have switched to working with her instead of the chair, but I- I couldn’t function properly when she had her fingers in my brain.”

Parker made a wounded noise and leaned over to squeeze him in a hug. “We won’t let her do it again”, she said fiercely. “You’re Eliot’s, and that means you’re ours, and we won’t let it happen again.”

Yasha’s responding smile was grateful, and they returned their attention to the video feeds. Eliot’s button cam, which had been pointed at an empty room since his mobile cell was deposited there, now showed a man- the psychologist, presumably. 

“I’ll go ahead and run facial recognition on-“

“Helmut Zemo. Former Colonel with the Sokovian Armed Forces. Resigned his commission after he lost his father, wife, and son during the Battle of Sokovia”, FRIDAY’s voice interrupted. 

“...well that’s definitely not who they were expecting. I think this is our guy- he matches up with the footage from the bombing we couldn’t connect to Yasha”, added Hardison. “And he… I’m seeing some strange cell phone activity a few days ago near the house of someone my algorithm flagged as possibly being HYDRA. Alright Eliot, I think we’ve got what we need, now we just gotta focus on getting you out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have most of chapters 7 and 8 written but they're not ready to post yet, and I have eye surgery tomorrow so it'll be a while before I'll be able to finish working on them. I also set a final chapter count - I have outlines for chapters 9 thru 16 now that I know what the story feels like and where I want to go with it. Obviously that chapter count is subject to change, but I'm pretty confident that I'll be able to keep writing this soon! Thank you all for reading, and I always appreciate your comments!


	7. Give Him Just Enough Rope to Hang Himself - Eliot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the well-wishes regarding my surgery! The first couple of days were the worst, but I'm already feeling a lot better, and I'm making sure to follow the doctor's recommendations so everything heals properly. 
> 
> Some of the recent reviews I received led to me looking at this chapter in a slightly different light, so I made some changes to my earlier plan, but I do think it's for the better; there had been some dialogue that didn't feel natural, but it took those reviews to come up with a different plan that would let me cut out that segment entirely. I'm really appreciating all of the positive feedback I'm receiving from you guys!
> 
> You may have noticed that I've finally added a chapter count for this fic - I have an outline through chapter 16, which is where the CACW Rewrite Arc ends, and looks like it will be a natural place to end this story. However, I do currently plan to write at least one sequel, and I'm hoping to include some developing relationship content at that point.

The cell was uncomfortable, forcing his body into a position where he couldn’t completely relax. “That’s great”, he subvocalized, “but I don’t know if you’ve noticed, this cell is pretty escape-proof.”

“Nothing is escape-proof”, Parker scoffed, but then she paused. “Okay, that weird cage might be pretty escape-proof. Did they just have a mobile supersoldier cell lying around?”

“From the looks of it, this particular model was built sometime after the Battle of New York - with all the space aliens and that giant flying whale that defied all the laws of physics, that shit broke my brain just looking at it!” Hardison’s brief aside made Eliot chuckle and relax. “But good news - it looks like along with getting out of weapons, Stark Industries has stayed well out of the incarceration business, so this cell was built by HammerTech.”

“Meaning?” 

This time, FRIDAY responded to Eliot. “I’ve identified some key weak points in the engineering of this structure. The restraints require electricity to function well enough to contain enhanced persons; while in transit, that electricity was provided by a battery, but now it is connected to the building’s power supply. If power is disconnected or disrupted, the restraints should be significantly weakened.”

“On it.” The familiar tapping of keys came over the comms as Hardison directed his attention to the new task. 

In front of him, Helmut Zemo, posing as Theo Broussard, had finished organizing his notes. 

“I’m not here to judge you, I just want to ask you a few questions.” Zemo’s voice was mild, and for the most part, unthreatening. Eliot focused on him. This was the mark, the person who had conned the world into believing an innocent man had planted a bomb at the UN, just so he could get Yasha here-and now he had to play the man’s game so they could find just the way to apply pressure so that he destroyed himself from the foundations up.

“Do you know where you are, James? I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me, James.” A patronizing note in Zemo’s voice made Eliot cringe. 

“I hated the name James. Hate it even now when applied to me.” Yasha’s voice in his ear was calming. They’d decided to work in tandem for this part. “I’d rather be called Bucky than James, even if that’s not who I feel like anymore.” 

Eliot stifled a smirk; even if the game was afoot, it wouldn’t do to let the mark, or any of the many observers, see anything but what they expected. “My name is Bucky.”

A brief silence stretched between Eliot and Zemo, but Parker spoke up in his ear. “Looks like Captain Tightass isn’t just brawn and no brains- he’s putting together the pieces, knows there’s something weird about everyone in the world focused on Yasha after the bombing.”

“...we only have to talk about one.” While Eliot had been distracted, Zemo had continued speaking, so he redirected his attention to the man in front of him. 

Before either of them could speak again, a power outage hit the facility. Emergency lights still blinked overhead, but the security systems in the building were offline, and Eliot could already feel the difference in the restraints.

“I know I was trying to do that, but that  _ definitely _ wasn’t me!” The sounds of typing increased in speed. “This outage is taking out half the city! I would have at least tried to limit it to a radius of a couple blocks!”

“...why don’t we discuss your home- your real home.” Zemo pulled out a red notebook that looked vaguely menacing to Eliot. 

In his ear, Yasha began talking swiftly. “I think that notebook has my control words; they used them before every mission, and it would feel like I was just along for the ride as my body did everything without me. The moment he starts talking, you’ll have to start trying to break out - he’ll expect that. HYDRA didn’t want anything in the way of me completing a mission, not even their own restraints.” Yasha took a rough breath before he continued. “I don’t know if the control words will work over the comms, but just in case, I’m going to have to take my earpiece out for now. Parker will let me know if you need anything from me.”

Eliot’s eyes widened. He’d counted on having Yasha directly in his ear to coach him through his responses- but this wouldn’t be the first time something they’d been counting on was pulled out from under them and they’d had to improvise. It helped that the mark wasn’t even actually HYDRA himself- if it had been someone who’d seen or worked with the Winter Soldier directly in the past, the whole job could have fallen apart in an instant. 

“I’m here, his comm is out, but I can hear through yours and I can tell him what you need”, Parker said. Eliot tapped out • — — • , P for Parker in Morse Code, and took a deep breath. 

Zemo began reciting the words- he’d obviously only bothered to learn the specific words needed to activate the Winter Soldier. With far more ease than he’d expected, even knowing the cell was built by HammerTech, Eliot wrenched his left arm free from its shackles and began tearing at all of the other restraints holding him back. Those fell apart quickly, so he quickly turned his attention to the hinges of the cell door- Parker had mentioned before that when the walls and the locking mechanism of a room or safe were over-engineered, the hinges were frequently overlooked. Finally, he broke through, just in time to come to a parade rest in front of Zemo as he finished calling out the command words.

“Soldat?”

“Da.” Eliot’s response unsettled Zemo for a moment, and he peered more closely at Eliot’s face, but the inconsistent illumination of the emergency lights and the weak shine of Zemo’s portable flashlight obscured the swap. He frantically tapped — • — —, and masked a sigh of relief when he heard Yasha’s voice on the comms after a brief scramble with the earbud.

“Ya gotov otvechet - it means ready to comply, it’s the call-and-response that’s supposed to let the handler know that the words are working.” 

Zemo took a step back, and said again, “Soldat?”

“Ya gotov otvechet”, Eliot repeated, doing his level best to match Yasha’s intonation and pronunciation. Given the way Zemo’s posture relaxed slightly, he must have been successful.

“Mission Report. December 16, 1991.”

Dutifully, Eliot repeated Yasha word for word as he relayed the mission report over the comms. “Mission Report, December 16, 1991. Assassination and retrieval. From a hidden vantage point, shot out one tire on a specific vehicle as it passed, license plate HSTARK1. Lethal force authorized; both the driver and the passenger were still alive at the time of the crash. Incurred further injuries on both victims consistent with injuries from motor vehicle accidents. Retrieved briefcase from the trunk of the vehicle. Verified contents- new formulation of a serum to produce enhanced soldiers. Retrieved surveillance footage and destroyed all copies.”

Zemo’s face was smug, as though Eliot’s report was exactly what he expected. “Your orders are to leave this facility, acquire transport, and make your way to the base in Siberia. Lethal force is authorized.” 

Eliot clenched his fist in frustration. He wanted nothing more than to punch Zemo in the face for causing all of them so much trouble. 

“You know,” Yasha chimed in briefly over the comms, “HYDRA often had a problem with Winter Soldiers injuring their handlers- and with as much infighting as the organization had, the practice was never fully discouraged.”

Barely hiding his glee, Eliot rammed his right fist into Zemo’s solar plexus, leaving him gasping for air on the floor. Ignoring the man, he proceeded to slam the doors open to try and make his way to an extraction point; they had most of the information they needed, they just needed to regroup and put together a workable plan.

Down the hall, he could see the security personnel headed in his direction, and barrelled into them, catching them off-balance. The many years he’d spent as an effective but non-lethal fighter on the Leverage team served him well. The people he hit went down and stayed down, but would recover with treatment and time. 

As Eliot turned the corner at the end of the hallway, he ran headfirst into Rogers and Wilson. He was the first to recover, and caught Rogers by the collar of his shirt. “That ‘psychologist’ they set up to try and get your friend evaluated? Impersonator, goes by the name of Helmut Zemo. Don’t have time to go into it all right now, but if you hurry you might be able to catch him.” A gesture he could more feel than see from Rogers, and Wilson stilled beside him, from where he’d been about to start engaging Eliot in a fight. “My tech guy will send you an address where we can finish this conversation, you can see Barnes, but for right now try to get Zemo.”

He let go of the man and took a step back. It worked in their favor that the power was still out- without having planted surveillance equipment of his own, Zemo would have no way of knowing his orders weren’t being followed to the letter.

A beat, and Wilson and Rogers looked at each other. As Rogers opened his mouth to speak, he jolted, his phone vibrating at his hip. When he pulled it out of his pocket, his eyebrows raised. “Your tech guy?” 

Eliot glanced at the screen, recognized the number and the signature, and nodded. Once Rogers and Wilson had turned down the hallway, Eliot stepped into an alcove; it wouldn’t do for the power to come back on unexpectedly and catch him out in the open. “Parker, give me an extraction plan.”

“No matter what we do, you’ll still have to fight your way through more security personnel - it’s like one of Hardison’s raids on his elf game, they keep popping up everywhere! I think I want you to take the route through the canteen - it’s big, it has lots of visibility, and we have our choice of escape routes from there, depending on how things go down.”

FRIDAY spoke up as well. “I’ll guide Boss in that direction as well; I’m capable of relaying all of the data around our collaboration, but he’ll do better once he can see who he’s working with.”

“You hear that Hardison? _You_ might have scored a date with his AI, but _I’m_ going to meet Tony Stark in person before you do”, Eliot said for the sole purpose of releasing some of the tension and riling up his partner. As Hardison sputtered, Eliot continued with, “I’m sure that if this all goes well, you’ll have a chance to geek out with Stark to your heart’s content.”


	8. Trust Your Experts When They’re Talking About Their Fields of Expertise- Tony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is because I’ve always been irritated at how dismissive Steve is with Tony like all the time. Tony might be irreverent with the government, but he is effective at dealing with them, and in general when he’s not a direct expert he knows to either improve his own knowledge or work with experts. Tony Stark absolutely wants accountability, but isn’t going to capitulate to anyone, especially not someone like Ross.

Just as Natasha mentioned her misgivings and uncertainty about the situation, a blackout hit the building. “FRIDAY, get me a source on that outage”, he prompted his AI, without an immediate response. “FRIDAY?”

“Yes Boss, I’ll get right on that!”

Turning away from Natasha, he tapped on his glasses again. “Is everything alright? Why the delay?”

“Collaboration, Boss; that group from Portland you like so much is here to help. That said, the source of the outage is a substation outside the city, it’s completely offline; the entire area has lost power.”

“This was no accident, someone has been setting this up-“

“The psychologist Boss, he’s not who he says he is, he wanted to lean on HYDRA’s brainwashing to activate the Winter Soldier.” FRIDAY’s voice was smug that she was able to preempt him with the information he wanted. 

Taken aback, he blinked. “I’m gonna set aside how you already knew that and come back to it later- tell me you have good news.”

“The man in the cell is  _ not _ the Winter Soldier. He’s in direct contact with Sergeant Barnes and should be able to fool any observers that aren’t already in the know, but will be in full control of himself.”

“That’s good to hear.”

Around him, the room was buzzing with activity. His cousin Sharon had already shown Steve and Wilson where they needed to go- she’d always been fascinated by Aunt Peggy’s stories about the Steve Rogers who tragically crashed into the Atlantic before he could give her a dance.

Natasha was at his side as they briskly headed out towards the action. “Tell me you brought a suit.”

“Sure did, it’s a lovely Tom Ford, three-piece, two-button”, he said, distracted. “I’m an active-duty non-combatant and I wasn’t expecting to need it!”

Before he could keep telling Natasha exactly why he didn’t have more substantial gear, or list the more subtle gear he did have on hand, Sharon made it back from wherever she’d directed Steve and Sam, and was leading him and Natasha to an area dotted with tables and chairs, where Not Sergeant Barnes was laying into the facility personnel. “FRIDAY, you were saying?”

“The man is very good at inflicting non-lethal, non-permanent damage. His opponents will go down- but they’ll all recover. Note the discarded weapons.”

Batons, handguns, little things that would make the man more effective and more lethal if that was his goal, all of these were taken and dropped without a second glance. Next to him, he could feel Sharon and Natasha getting ready to join the fray, but he gripped their shoulders. “It’s not what it looks like. Follow my lead- choreography, not fighting, it just has to look good to other people from a distance, the cameras are still off-line.”

As the three of them approached, the man glanced in their direction. “Natalya. Yasha says hello.” Based on how still she went next to him, that must mean something to Natasha, but he didn’t have time for that; the man had already turned to address him, saying, “Stark- my partner wants you to know that if he weren’t already happily married, he’d be chatting up your AI for a date.”

“And if she weren’t so early in her development, I’d consider letting him”, Tony quipped back, surprised. Next to him, Natasha had recovered from her shock and had jumped forward to spar, taking turns with Sharon trading blows with the man. 

“You were trained by him too, weren’t you.” There was a note in Natasha’s voice that Tony had never heard before, something vulnerable and young. 

“A long time and a different person ago, I was. It’s how I recognized him two years ago, got him somewhere he could recover, get his brain on straight.”

“So you’re why Steve had so much trouble finding him?” This question from Sharon, of course. 

Across the room, past where Not Bucky Barnes was sparring with Natasha, Tony saw more people coming to join the fight. He pulled on his watch gauntlet and lined up his shot. “Duck!”

Not Sergeant Barnes- he really needed something better to call him than that- ducked so perfectly in time with him that it appeared to the outside observer that Tony’s non-lethal shot from the gauntlet had “missed”, hitting the people across the room in an unlucky case of friendly fire; he then used the motion to knock Sharon and Natasha to the ground winded but uninjured. 

“Don’t quite have enough time to go into all the details of that, but I can tell you we need to head to Siberia. I’ll make sure Rogers and Wilson get the message; we’ll rendezvous at the airport in 24 hours; we’ll try to get a more comprehensive briefing to you soon.”

Tony raised an eyebrow. “What kind of manpower do we need?”

“As much as we can get together in that time; if what Yasha says is true, we’re going to need everyone on deck we can find.” The man closed the space between him and Tony. “I’ve got to make this look good, tell me where I should hit.”

“Black eye, I can compensate for that in the suit.”

“Alright- if you need to reach us sooner than the rendezvous, FRIDAY knows how to reach us.”

Tony nodded, then braced himself for the punch. 

~*~*~

Sitting in the office after that encounter, Tony hid his amusement at Thaddeus Ross’s impotent attempts to take charge of the situation behind his hand. The property damage in Romania had been minimal, and the only casualties either there or here in Germany had been minor injuries- people had been winded, joints had been sprained, but there was nothing anyone wouldn’t recover from- and because of that, it was very easy to argue that a peaceful resolution was not only achievable, but preferable.

But then, Ross hadn’t exactly hid his approach to enhanced individuals. Tony still regretted that he hadn’t already amassed enough dirt and political influence to take Ross down before Bruce had left- or even before Ross had become Secretary of State. But his girl FRIDAY was always watching, and Tony anticipated that soon he’d have that last piece he needed to declaw Ross and get his slimy influence out of the Accords. 

Ross was practically foaming at the mouth in front of him. “They’ve escaped custody! They’ve caused property damage! They are a menace to the public and I want them contained!”

“So give me 72 hours. I’ll assemble a team, bring them in, we’ll all talk this out like adults, no harm no foul.”

“You can have 36-“

“Am I hearing you right? 36? Why such a short timeline, Ross? What would make that even necessary?” Tony’s gaze drilled needle-sharp into Ross’s eyes. “Nobody is dead. The property damage is paid for. The injuries they’ve caused have all been minor. And oh, don’t forget, this is from a man who was a prisoner of war for seventy years and trained to be a ghost story assassin!” His volume and cadence had risen through the sentence until he broke off with a shout. “If Barnes wanted people dead, they’d be dead. Instead we have a traumatized man showing extremely good self-control in the middle of a very stressful situation, and I think he’s earned some benefit of the doubt and some goodwill, don’t you?” 

Ross sneered. “He escaped custody.”

“And we will bring him back. And we’ll find some better experts in the psychology of prisoners of war, even if I have to hire them myself.”

Ross’s scowl showed that he’d accepted defeat, however disgracefully. “Alright, 72 hours, but any further property damage-“

Tony couldn’t resist. “Any further property damage and the billionaire superhero sugar daddy will write a big fat check to cover it all.” Blowing an insouciant kiss at the general- it made him turn puce, and Tony was never above weaponizing some flirtation to make bigots uncomfortable- he hooked his arm through Natasha’s and escorted her out of the office. 

“Sharon get out alright?” He’d asked Natasha to help his cousin; Steve and Sam were some of the most capable individuals on the team, and they’d need their gear, and Sharon would be good for that but not if it got her in trouble. 

“Of course she did, what do you take me for. But- Ross. Was it really wise to antagonize him like that?”

“Wise? Probably not. Strategic, though; he makes more mistakes when he’s both flustered and frustrated, and all I need is the right one and I can destroy his career.”

Natasha pulled him to an abrupt stop. “So… you’re not working  _ with _ him, so much as  _ around _ him?”

“Have been the whole time, Itsy Bitsy, keep up. Did you really think I’d ever cooperate with the man who made my best science bro a fugitive, if I didn’t have a plan to deal with that fiasco and make things safe for whenever he decides to return?” He caught her flinch. “Yeah, don’t get me started on the personal betrayal, you really did a number on him and I’m really hoping wherever he is, he’s working through that- but that’s not the matter at hand. Point is, Ross is dirty, I almost have enough evidence to bring him down, I’ve been using all of the time and influence I have to work with a huge team of lawyers to fight him on every damn clause of those Accords- that damn fiasco in Lagos gave him just enough leverage to accelerate the timeline before I could fix everything, but I still managed to get most of it in there  _ and  _ made sure there was a process for making further amendments, so, you’re welcome.”

“Does Steve know?” Natasha’s hand was light on his arm, but her gaze was urgent.

Tony sighed. “The good Captain seems unwilling and unable to listen when I talk about politics. That, and the moment I mentioned that I was keeping Wanda confined to the compound, he shut down entirely. She’s a refugee, she’s enhanced, and a lot of people see her as the face of the latest disaster, but I have enough security and clout that she is safe as long as she stays on the compound. What I  _ can’t  _ guarantee is that someone on a power trip against enhanced individuals wouldn’t find a way to grab her if she was on the street.”

Natasha didn’t really relax, but she let the two of them keep walking. “So- what do we do now?”

Tony felt his phone buzz, and glanced at her briefly before pulling it out. “Well, you could show king kitty-cat all this photographic evidence that absolves Barnes  _ and _ his mysterious stunt double of his father’s death, and ask if he’d like to come along and help us deal with the one really behind everything.” He forwarded the message- it was from Leverage International but he could see FRIDAY’s fingerprints all over it, and oh how he loved to see his baby girl learning and growing. “Meanwhile- I’ve had my eye on a couple potential recruits, but the one I’m closest to approaching… he’s enhanced, but he’s young, and I don’t know what we’re getting into in Siberia.”

“And the likelihood of recruiting any of the others?”

“They’re all pretty dedicated to Hell’s Kitchen, and standoffish and prickly, for the most part. It’s taking me this long to approach them because I don’t want them just slamming their fists in my face.”

“Isn’t the phrase usually about doors?” Her eyebrow quirked up in a brief smirk. 

“Yeah, well, I said what I said for a reason.”

“Talk to the one you’re more likely to convince; pair him up with someone who has complementary skills and more experience, who will keep him safe.”

“Then I guess I’m off to Queens! Keep me updated on His Meowiness, I’ll make sure to reach out to Honeybear and loop him in, and in a couple days when the immediate problem is taken care of we can all sit down and hash out the Accords.”


End file.
